Facebook Stole Our Brand

Corporations are fierce about protecting their brands. The formula to make Coca-Cola, Hoy Fong Sriracha Sauce, or even the recipe for a great dish at any restaurant is protected like nuclear bomb launch codes. Apple once sued Microsoft because Windows had the same “look and feel” as Apple’s IOS. Businesses spend hundreds of millions of dollars to prevent trade secret theft. You may want to steal a company’s “secret sauce,” but you’d better be willing to fight for it.

Not so with the church. We were just in the season when we sing about baby Jesus being homeless, and born in a barn next to cow, sheep and chicken poop. We brag about Jesus’ primary mission being the transformation of the least of these my brothers and sisters. We promote our core values of sacrificial love, radical hospitality and extreme selflessness. “Come Lord Jesus!” we pray.

And then what do we do with our money? We send a little to charity. We collect some cans of food and give it to the local pantry. We feed people on Thanksgiving and Christmas. We feel good because we made a contribution.

We deposit our giving dollars in global banks. We reduce ministry staff so that we can devote money to keep up the building. We cut local and national missions giving because we minimize the value of collective impact. We think we are good budget managers.

We invest our retirement funds and our church endowments with brand name investment firms. We say, “We must be conservative. It’s church money!”

Meanwhile, poverty increases in our neighborhoods or the neighborhoods nearby. Half of our country lives below the poverty line (mostly children and elderly). Government investment in alleviating poverty decreases dramatically. Christians agree that the government should stop giving away ‘our tax dollars’ to poor people.

The Reverend Doctor Patrick Garnet Duggan is a native New Yorker, the son of a Jamaican cabinet maker and a New York attorney. He serves as Senior Pastor of the Congregational Church of South Hempstead UCC and Executive Director of the UCC Church Building and Loan Fund. He loves writing, preaching, teaching, helping church leaders with difficult building projects, and talking about how the church can use its resources to change the world. Twitter: @revduggan1

About

New Sacred is where progressive religion and progressive culture collide. We feature writers from popular sites such as Huffington Post Religion, Religion Dispatches, and For Harriet, as they tackle the taboos of church culture, trending topics, and personal triumphs and tragedies.

Sharing

Recent Posts

Links

Contact

Name

Email

Message

Comment Policy:

New Sacred aims to share diverse opinions about faith, culture, and the human experience. We encourage engaged comments and conversation on our blog. However; we will not tolerate emotionally or physically violent speech. We maintain the right to delete any comments we deem to fit within those categories.